A day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, General Motors Corp.'s vice president of corporate relations and diversity posted a message on an internal company Web site. "We sometimes forget that the GM family consists of 388,000 very diverse employees representing many different countries, religions, ethnicities, as well as points of view," Rod Gillum wrote. "Let us pull together as one GM to value both our differences and our similarities." Similar messages of unity and tolerance have flooded e-mail inboxes of the nation's workers, highlighting corporate America's increased sensitivity to diversity since the terrorist attacks and subsequent retaliation.

Sony has confirmed the promotion of Michael Lynton to CEO of Sony Corporation of America, announcing that the appointment will take effect June 27. Additionally, studio has confirmed that Sony general counsel and executive vice president Nicole Seligman will become prexy of SCA. News of the promotions broke last week amidst rumblings that Sony's Japanese owners are mulling a sale of its U.S. entertainment operations. Lynton shares the title of chairman with Amy Pascal, and Sony has confirmed that the pair will continue running studio operations.

For the most part, American com- panies are ready for Y2K. So says Merrill Lynch in a sweeping report on worldwide preparation for the millennium's end.Millions of computer programs and chips have been replaced or updated since companies first began to learn about the millennium bug.The bug may have stopped computers from accepting the new century's starting date - Jan.1, 2000. That could have caused havoc by shutting systems down.Instead, New Year's Day should be just another Saturday for corporate America, including banks, brokerages, mutual funds, nuclear power plants, other utilities and airlines.

DAYTONA BEACH — Trevor Bayne is not spoiled by the fame and fortune he has found on the fast track. Just a few days past his 21st birthday, Bayne still has that endearing, unpretentious personality. He is cordial and accessible, if not a little scatterbrained. He recently forgot to wear dress pants to a Ford Racing media event at Charlotte Motor Speedway, forcing one of his PR people to make a quick run to the mall to pick up some slacks to replace Trevor's casual blue-jeans.

In New Hampshire, the heirs of Abraham Lincoln are fighting over the mantle of Samuel Gompers. Pat Buchanan picked up where he left off in Iowa by posing as defender of the beleaguered working class. Bob Dole gave a speech objecting to a disgusting paradox: ''Corporate profits are setting records, and so are corporate layoffs.'' Any day now, you can expect to see Lamar Alexander wearing a tool belt and leading choruses of ''I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.'' Makes you wonder: Why not just elect a Democrat?

Can any amount of health care be too much? We Americans, with our renowned capacity for wretched excess, historically would have answered that question with a resounding ''no!'' But now, with an estimated $420 billion a year going just to pay the nation's health-care tab, an unusual coalition is forming around the idea that enough is enough.In the forefront are some of the leaders of corporate America, which in 1984 shelled out $87 billion for group health insurance.It is, at best, a deeply sensitive issue -- and few companies want to appear as heartless skinflints, consigning their employees to less-than- adequate care.

Ah, the irony of it all. The Dow Jones industrial average goes up as the number of jobs falls. The trade deficit rises as the dollar drops.What is all this trying to tell us?That a recession is a good thing?That corporate America gets healthier as more people are added to the unemployment roles?That every lost job adds another buck to corporate earnings?Even as the Labor Department announced another 395,000 new jobless claims for the week ended June 17, the early-morning news reported Thursday that ''stocks sprinted higher in early trading, as bond prices rose.

I don't feel as dumb as I did before I talked with Pete Scanlon, but my frustration and fears about future tax burdens are as high as ever.Scanlon, like me, is overwhelmed by the so-called ''tax simplification'' laws and has turned his annual income tax self-torture chores over to someone else. Evaluating the new tax forms, Scanlon concludes that those who crafted them ''don't even know how to spell simplification.''That kind of talk doesn't carry much weight coming from a taxi driver, a factory worker or a newspaper reporter, but Scanlon happens to be the head man of Coopers & Lybrand, the international accounting and consulting firm that rides herd on some America's largest companies.

By Charles Garfield, Special To The Los Angeles Times, December 22, 1991

When IBM announced plans a few weeks ago to cut 20,000 workers from the payroll as part of what CEO John Akers calls a ''fundamental redefinition'' of its business, the company's stock jumped $2.75 per share. Industry analysts praised the move as essential if IBM is to maintain a viable position in an industry that has surged ahead of its longtime leader.(Last week, we saw General Motors announce a sweeping restructuring that its chairman said should save $2 billion next year. To do so, the automotive giant will close 21 plants and cut 74,000 jobs over the next few years.

Jack Eckerd was walking through one of his Eckerd drugstores one day in 1971 when he spotted a couple of youngsters sitting on the floor reading magazines while their parents shopped. It wasn't the fact that the children were helping themselves to the merchandise that got the drugstore magnate's attention. It was what they were reading - Playboy and Hustler magazines.As Eckerd recalls the experience 22 years later, ''It made me mad.'' His anger did not abate the next day when he opened a letter from a concerned grandmother who wasn't too thrilled with the contents of a provocative paperback book her 14-year-old grandson had purchased at Eckerds.

WASHINGTON -- Mass layoffs involving 50 or more workers increased sharply last year, and large job cuts appear to be accelerating in 2009 at a furious pace. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that 21,137 mass layoffs took place last year, up from 15,493 in 2007. More than 2.1 million workers were fired as a result of last year's mass layoffs, the department said. The economy is likely to continue to shed jobs for the rest of this year, even if an economic-stimulus bill pushed by President Barack Obama is approved, economists said.

As the financial crisis crimps demand for U.S. goods and services, the workers who produce them are losing their jobs by the tens of thousands. Layoffs have arrived in force, like a wrenching second act in the unfolding crisis. In just the past two weeks, the list of companies announcing their intention to cut workers has read like a Who's Who of corporate America: Merck, Yahoo, General Electric, Xerox, Pratt & Whitney, Goldman Sachs, Whirlpool, Bank of America, Alcoa, Coca-Cola, the Detroit automakers and nearly all the airlines.

Richard McCleve came of age in -- and embraced -- the hippie generation. He went from playing with a rock band in New York City to success in corporate America. Never forgetting his principles along the way, eventually he found a way to do business without wearing a suit. And he had dreams of buying a large ranch in Texas where he could grow strawberries. "When my mother was pregnant, he felt he had to grow up and get a career," said daughter Heather Gibbs of Las Vegas. "He was always a hippie at heart.

A popular Winter Springs yoga studio is changing its name to avoid an ugly legal battle with one of the United States' best-known beauty companies. Red Door Yoga owner Joni Giconi got a letter recently from an attorney for Elizabeth Arden, telling her to change the studio's name. Elizabeth Arden has a line of Red Door spas and fragrances. "Your subsequent opening of a yoga salon and massage parlor in Florida using the trademark RED DOOR is likely to cause confusion with and dilute the distinctiveness of the valuable RED DOOR trademark," attorney Joseph Dreitler said in a letter to Giconi.

It's official now: The sellout to corporate America is finally complete, and the '60s generation is dead. The epitaph notes that Joni Mitchell, the flower-child queen who wrote the Woodstock anthem, has given up her counterculture idealism to embrace the corporate "devil" nattily disguised by a Starbucks logo. She partnered with Starbucks last week to release her comeback album. No, Ms. Mitchell isn't the first corporate coffee shill. Bob Dylan also percolated exclusively at Starbucks a while back.

DETROIT -- Joyce Pruett doesn't see her faith as something she can hide. She's a Christian, and Christians talk about that part of their lives freely, including at work, Pruett said. "You can't separate who you are from your faith," said Pruett, a contractor with outplacement firm Right Management Consultants in Detroit. "That's the way it's been since Christ." She doesn't outright proselytize, but if there's an opportunity, she'll talk about her faith. Once skittish about the idea of religion being part of people's work lives, corporate America is increasingly embracing the blending of faith and work, including large companies such as Ford Motor Co., American Airlines, AOL Inc. and Intel.

A pair of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on sexual harassment open up a Pandora's box of confusion for corporate America: What more must companies do to escape liability in harassment lawsuits?The recent decisions reaffirmed that an employee who rebuffs a boss's advances can pursue a sexual-harassment suit even if she or he suffers no job setbacks.However, the decisions said, employers may defend themselves in such cases if they ``exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior.

As we continue to slog it out during one of the worst recessions, executives are quietly saying that the downturn in the economy is, in a sense, just the slimming diet corporate America needed after the excesses of the go-go '80s.During the last two or three years of dwindling sales and disappearing profits, a lot of the fat got cut away.Budgets bloated with expense-account entertaining and discretionary travel were drastically trimmed. Massive layoffs melted away the middle-age spread of middle management.

Media outlets, recognizing our unquenchable thirst for knowledge and gripping entertainment, coupled with our desire to attain knowledge easily and quickly, compel us to accept "truth" and "facts" without understanding. With so much information available, assaulting us from all directions, we are led to believe that we are moving toward an age free from deception. After all, we can jump online and travel to Web sites at relatively uninhibited speeds to read or watch "truth" in the world.

The plan was for cows to be everywhere Friday. About 30 of them were to walk on hind legs, shakin' their udders, tussling with the Miami and Louisiana State mascots on the sidelines. There were to be small, stuffed ones, waiting on each of the 72,000 seats at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta -- to be hugged, sat on, stepped on, spilled on, possibly thrown off ledges to untimely deaths. The cows were on billboards and banners, claiming their love of chicken and with a zest for bad spelling.